Grandad’s Garage - Real Paranormal and Ghost Stories
The record of Grandad Tony’s lifelong passion for the supernatural world.
Listen on:
Episodes
Friday Oct 07, 2022
Saturday Sep 10, 2022
Saturday Sep 03, 2022
Saturday Sep 03, 2022
Aunty Betty's Walking Stick from 1979 and the Thornton Viaduct from 1985
Friday Aug 26, 2022
Friday Aug 26, 2022
Another two stories, the Beanie Boo from March 2001 and Ernie's Garage from May 1987.
Wednesday Aug 17, 2022
Tuesday Aug 09, 2022
Monday Aug 08, 2022
Monday Aug 08, 2022
The first two stories from Grandad Tony's Collection.
The Licorice Box - 1986
Small Angry Man - 1977
Hello and Welcome to Grandad's Garage
Grandad Tony was a good man, a wonderful Pappy to his seven grandchildren, a fantastic father to his three children and a doting husband to my Nanny Mary. Mary died when we were all very young, I remember her better than most of my siblings can. She was a proper grandma, she was always cooking, baking and knitting, Grandad Tony would tell us stories about her, especially around religious holidays. She had been very active in the local church, when she was young and took enormous pride in her floral displays.
Tony wasn’t religious at all but he went to every single service and stood alongside her. He was just that kind of person. As we grew up he made sure he knew everything there was to know about each and every one of his grandchildren’s interests, I remember when my younger brother told him he was into American Football he went to the library and took out every book he could find and by the next time we visited Grandad Tony was an expert. He shared our interests with real care and love and we shared his, fly-fishing, whenever he could he would take us to sit by a beautiful river with a massive picnic and we would spend a day having the best fun.
We believed that this was his only interest, in fact we put his favourite fishing hat into his coffin. The thing was, it wasn’t, in fact it wasn’t even his biggest interest and what was shocking was not one of us knew about it, not my mum, my aunts and uncles and, as far as we can tell not even Nanny Mary.
Finding out about Grandad Tony’s real passion was like some weird film. He lived on his own in the house he had shared with my grandma since 1975. We all tried to visit during the lockdown and he was never short of conversations through his living room window. Everyone was so careful but somehow he caught COVID, he fought hard but this wasn’t really a fair contest and we lost him in May 2020.
We took it in turns trying to sort out his house and all his affairs and it was my cousin Becky who found the key. He had kept it in his glasses case so we knew it was important but nobody could find the lock that it fitted. Then my dad found an odd payment going out of his bank account to the local council every month which we eventually discovered was the rent for a garage about fifteen minutes walk from his house. The man at the council said he had been renting it at least 25 years, they had no records before then so couldn’t go any further back. We were still under restrictions so only one of us could go and check it out, so I offered.
My Aunt posted the key and I headed to the garage, I’m not sure what I expected to find, I think part of me was hoping for some kind of classic car. What I did find was an immaculately kept garage with shelving around the three walls, there was a small table in the middle with a chair and a couple more shelves in front of it and oh so many boxes.
Each of the boxes had a hand written label on it with a date, and a small comment on what was in it and I was intrigued to have a look in, but on the table were a set of notebooks. All with a label on the front with dates written on them. The oldest was dated April 1958. Whatever Grandad had been up to, he had been doing it a while.
When I sat down to read his most recent book I found he’d been writing in it in 2019, this had been his lifelong pursuit. I’ll be honest, what I read blew my mind. On that first page was a perfectly organised and detailed report of a family’s experience of living in a house with a ghost. What was so mind blowing was that there were dozens of entries in this book alone, and there were piles of these notebooks.
My curiosity got the better of me and I opened a box. In it was a really small vase. It had been very carefully wrapped and had a sheet of accompanying notes. According to the notes it was a haunted vase. At this point I should make it very clear that I don’t believe in any of this stuff, but then, I didn’t think Grandad Tony did. The notes told the story of the vase and then explained that the family had asked him to take it away, which he duly did. Each and every one of the boxes had an item in it with accompanying notes. It was incredible to see his weird collection.
Problem was, what do we do with it? As a family we were torn, and I mean torn, not split. Split suggests two ways, we were all of completely different positions. From burn it all to let’s create a museum. I’m not sure either of those views would ever have been the preferred one overall - though we did look into the museum one very briefly. I think the different solutions seemed to reflect how much people believed in this stuff being real. My devout aunts wanted them destroyed, my ghost believing brother was head of the museum campaign. As for me, I did not have (and still don’t) any idea what to do with everything but the idea of all that time, care and effort being completely lost was really not something I was happy with.
To complicate matters we still have to pay the rent on the garage. So we have come up with a short term compromise. I can document all of his work by the means of blogging or podcasting and if we make any money off it we will keep the garage.
So that’s where I am writing this. I’m in Grandad’s garage wondering where to start.
Disclaimer - I don’t believe any of this. My Grandad was a fantastic man and a great storyteller and I’m saving his legacy, that doesn’t mean I for one minute believe any of the stories. That’s up to you.